From Nice Guy™ to Feminist – My Rather Unremarkable Journey

This is one of the hardest posts for me to put up. I’ve been waffling over it for months; came close to deleting it a couple of times, in fact. I did so because it includes some rather personal information I’m seriously not comfortable divulging. However, in order to give my short and unremarkable story, this is information I have to provide, in order to provide context. A couple of times in this post I make a couple of requests with regard to comments. Please follow those requests. Also, MRAs and such are not welcome to post here. As this is my blog and I do not have to follow the first amendment of the US Constitution on my blog, I will be deleting any comments from any misogynistic MRA assholes. That doesn’t means I won’t allow any kind of debate here… I’m just not going to allow needlessly offensive comments and strawman/mischaracterizing bullshit. So don’t bother.

I call it “unremarkable” because my moment of change didn’t actually happen to me. I was collateral damage. I never had a direct moment of “holy fuck you’re a misogynistic shithead”. I got it second-hand while it happened to someone else.

So in a way, I got off lucky.

My learning curve was then largely by myself.

But to understand why I ever would have been a Nice Guy and MRA, you have understand some things about me… things that are personal and sad and depressing. Things I’m not always very comfortable talking about.

To be honest, I don’t want to talk about them, but I need to, because it is important.

#WiSCFI Was AWESOME!

You know how sometimes, when you bake, the edges can occasionally get burnt and kinda nasty, but everything else of what you baked is still gooey, chewy deliciousness?

That’s kinda how I view this past weekend’s Women in Secularism 2 conference. Ron Lindsay’s opening and R. Elisabeth Cornwell’s closing were those burnt edges, but once you cut them off, the rest of it was absolutely awesome. I quite literally have no other complaints about the weekend.

Theistsplaining (Shut Up and Listen)

“Your atheist friends are right that there is an important logical difference between believing that there is no God and not believing that there is a God.  Compare my saying , “I believe that there is no gold on Mars” with my saying “I do not believe that there is gold on Mars.”   If I have no opinion on the matter, then I do not believe that there is gold on Mars, and I do not believe that there is no gold on Mars.  There’s a difference between saying, “I do not believe (p)” and “I believe (not-p).”   Logically where you place the negation makes a world of difference.

But where your atheist friends err is in claiming that atheism involves only not believing that there is a God rather than believing that there is no God.

…

But when you look more closely at how protagonists of the presumption of atheism used the term “atheist,” you discover that they were defining the word in a non-standard way, synonymous with “non-theist.”  So understood the term would encompass agnostics and traditional atheists, along with those who think the question meaningless (verificationists).

…

Such a re-definition of the word “atheist” trivializes the claim of the presumption of atheism, for on this definition, atheism ceases to be a view.  It is merely a psychological state which is shared by people who hold various views or no view at all.  On this re-definition, even babies, who hold no opinion at all on the matter, count as atheists!  In fact, our cat Muff counts as an atheist on this definition, since she has (to my knowledge) no belief in God.

One would still require justification in order to know either that God exists or that He does not exist, which is the question we’re really interested in.”
~William Lane Craig “Definition of Atheism”

Great Guitar Solos – Heartbreaker live at “How the West Was Won” (Led Zeppelin)

Sadly, this you can’t watch, because there’s no video footage.

But you can certainly listen to it.

And please do. Eat it up. Enjoy it. Get it. Live it. Love it.

Skepticism and “Don’t be a Dick”

So earlier this morning, Hayley is a Ghost put up this post called “How it is”.

Honestly? It’s a good post. I understand her point of view and get where she’s coming from.

It’s just that I’m not 100% sure I can completely agree.

An Atheist Commercial

So yes, I think an official commercial would be incredible.

However, the commercial needs to serve a very specific purpose.

It should not be about proselytizing atheism or otherwise trying to get theists to become atheists. That, obviously, is a huge mistake. It also should not attack religion in any way, shape, or form.

The target audience for this commercial should be closeted atheists. Atheists who, for whatever reason, are afraid to admit that they’re atheists publically. Atheists, who sign up for atheist websites online, but do so anonymously, and do everything in their power to keep their identity from becoming known.

Most of all, it should target atheists who really think they are alone.

And this is how I think this commercial should work:

Jesus and Mo – Deep2

Jesus and Mo.

Heh.

Deeply wrong.

Yes you are.